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Road Trip!

Sorry I disappeared there for a bit.  I've been quite under the weather lately.  And I don't mean literally sick.  I mean the weather we've had around Chicago had me down.  My emotions are not happy when there isn't any sun...especially in May.

Okay...enough about that.

A few weeks ago, Mike really wanted to get out of town.  We checked our schedules and last weekend was the earliest one we thought would work.

We had a few places on our list like hiking at Matthiessen State Park, making our way to Galena for a night, and maybe going up to Spotted Cow Brewery on the way home?  We didn't exactly know when we set out.  (Note:  we did expect the weather to cooperate a bit more...but I guess we should be happy it didn't rain.)  We always tend to travel like this where we each have a few ideas and we see how much we can cram in.  It makes for a busy weekend!

Please note:  this is probably not the most efficient route to these places, but this is what we wanted to see a bit west.

Geneva
This was actually on Mike's list to visit Penrose Brewery, where he got to start his Chicago Craft Beer Week passport book a bit early.  We got to town early enough so we grabbed breakfast at Buttermilk and walked around the town for a bit.



Matthiessen State Park
It was so interesting to compare state parks right next to each other in the different seasons.  Starved Rock in the fall and Matthiessen in the spring.  We had fun hiking around and ended up covering the whole thing in about 3-4 hours. 



spring = lots of stairs that lead to creeks

Galena
We spent some time in Galena Saturday night and Sunday.  Saturday night we went to the Galena Brewing Company and I fell in love with the band.
Sunday we had some lunch downtown and just walked in their little shops.  There are quite a variety!

Field of Dreams
We took a detour Sunday morning to check out the Field of Dreams movie site.

Dubuque
We also took some time to explore Dubuque Sunday morning.  We took the Fenelon Place Elevator, walked by the river, and around the town.
 I got to pull the elevator bell!
hanging out with the mighty mississip

New Glarus Brewery
This was a bit out of our way...but we were in the general area :) And their brewery seemed like a perfect way to wrap up the weekend.  It was.  Especially their massive beirgarten, that almost seemed like a park.


A lot of our drive was two-lane highways with not a whole lot around us.  Luckily, we have different cell phone providers as it seemed one of us often had service when the other didn't (and we were using maps).  I said it would be fun to do a trip with just road maps.

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